Loyal to the Truth - Nouman Ali Khan - Khutbah Series

where i'd like to start today's khutba is with a reminder and an important consideration the quran always asks us to reflect and to think and to ponder and the concepts in the quran they become very difficult for us to properly analyze if we don't become think people of thought and people of reflection that's some that's a demand in the quran in fact it's even connected to our spiritual condition you would think when you think about something deeply it's an intellectual thing but actually in the quran contemplating the quran is also a matter of the heart muhammad allah says don't they then contemplate the quran think deeply about the quran or is it the case that their hearts have locks placed on them today's quoba is not about that ayah but i want to just share a quick comment about that ayah with you the hearts having locks already on them means many things and one of the things that it's me that it means is someone has already made up their mind so if i already have an opinion and i'm already convinced that my opinion is correct i don't care what you have to say i don't even care what the quran says this is what it is that means my heart is locked up and i am not capable now of contemplating the word of allah humbling that perhaps my opinion or the conclusion i had reached previously may be the wrong one and that can even happen within the scope of what i thought allah says what i thought the prophet says salallahu what i thought islam actually actually says because i heard it in or i heard it in a speech somewhere i watched it on youtube that must mean that it's correct or i heard it somebody was the person saying it was really screaming at the top of their lungs i mean that's got to be true then so that guy's a you know really good speaker or they give lots of they quoted lots of arabic so that must mean it's true so now it's become embedded in me that that's the way i'm supposed to think right but it's that's just the the lay person who doesn't really have a lot of background knowledge and they're getting information from those that have more knowledge than them but even those that have knowledge even those that have learned the religion and this happens not just in islam it happens in other religions too that we learn religion from certain people you don't just learn it by osmosis you learn it from a particular school a scholar a mother you know school of thought etc right and you're around those people and they have a certain way of thinking and as you grow in your thoughts you realize some of the things i learned from my school i don't find myself agreeing with them i think the other school on this issue has better evidence than what i learned from my teacher and i'm starting to diverge from the the school that i i originally learned from or my teacher right that doesn't mean that i just reject everything i learned from my teacher but give me two out of ten things i'm starting to get a little shaky on i don't think the evidences were that strong right so someone who's sincere to knowledge can go back to their teacher and say hey these two things i'm not as convinced let's let's revisit this or i'm finding this this counter evidence that's stronger so should we re revisit this issue but somebody else will say no no no you don't understand allah has chosen our school to be the ultimate you know torch the flag bearer of the truth everybody else is clearly on baltimore everybody else is wrong they need to get on board with the program and therefore if anybody even comes to me and says contemplate no no no no hold on a second no i i'm already been saved brother you're the one that needs saving so i don't need to think about anything you understand that mentality it can even happen from someone who's actually learned one of the demand one of the reasons the israelites rejected the prophet sallallahu alaihi is because they had learned what they considered the dean of allah from their teachers and those teachers learned it from their teachers and they were very qualified and they had allah calls them means that they're actually comes from hibern it means inc and the the scholars of the israelites were called because they were constantly flipping these ancient scrolls and pages and their hands would just get you know the ink would smudge on their fingers so the tips of their fingers would always be black and so they were called people of ink because they were constantly scrolling through these pages and pages and of course the average you know believer in their community they were not scholarly they're not researchers they're not they're not spending eight ten hours a day studying the scripture so these people have you know spent a lifetime engrossed in their studies and now comes the prophet alaihis did not graduate from any of their schools is not a scholar by their by their standards in fact he's unlettered he can't read and now he's reciting the word of allah and criticizing the israelites right and the israelites are phds and their subjects and they have an entire tradition of scholarship on top of scholarship on top of scholarship so the first reaction go how is he going to correct us who is he to tell us what qualifications does he have and even if he has some evidence that makes you go wait no that makes sense hey how did he know that that's like very deep inside volume 80 of this scroll that you know nobody has access to how is he criticizing something that's buried deep within our books and commenting on it in such a way nah i'm i'm not gonna i'm not gonna listen to this i don't wanna hear it it cuts too deep like when it when you are comfortable in what you think you know and then the truth comes and hits you you have two choices either you can i can humble myself and say maybe i need to rethink maybe i need to be loyal to the truth and not loyal to my conclusions or you have the other option you can say the moment you start feeling shaky the best defense is offense right so the moment you start getting your defenses started breaking you get uber offensive and say no this person's this i don't want to hear it stay away from him don't go to him etc and this is something that happened among the israelites now the quran warns us addresses at length in suratul it talks about allah talks about the israelites at length and one thing that i want you to know about that in this in today's quad just one thing to think about when allah talks about banu israel is allah did not give us anything in the quran that is just interesting information all of it is it is talking about you in it is your mention like it's relevant to me it's relevant to you allah did not give us information that we could say ah those israelites they were so messed up you know like that's not the point that doesn't give you any guidance the only purpose of talking about them in this much detail is because you and i are in potential danger of repeating their behavior and this is another important thing when allah is talking about he's not talking about one group he's talking about a very diverse nation among them were very good people among them were people that made lots of mistakes allah highlights the good among them in the quran allah highlights the ones that made mistakes among them in the quran allah highlights the corrupt ones among them in the quran allah did not say anybody who belongs to bani israel here's what i have to say about that it's not like that in the allah's book it's simply not like that and so we have to have a careful look when we when we consider what allah is talking about first and foremost i cannot i can never lose sight of the fact he's actually not just talking about someone else he's always talking about me there's there's something in me that that needs to learn from this you know and uh the story of yusuf alayhi salaam people say i learned a lot from yusuf alayhi salaam yeah that's cool you got to learn a lot from his brothers too you know everybody wants to try it connect themselves to the hero because like he's the hero of his story i'm the hero of my story and everybody else in my story is the villain so my my cousins are all the brothers of yusuf and my in-laws are the brothers of you so everybody else is the brothers you say i'm the yusuf guy right so so what happens is we don't want to you know find connection with what seems like a dark comparison right but the reason this is mentioned this is even in the fatiha in the fatiha we weren't just told to take inspiration from those that allah has favored salah okay it's done show me the path of those you favored that's not okay i just want to know about the good people and learn from their example no uh i'd like to make sure i don't follow the path of these two groups which means i need to know a lot about those paths so if accidentally i'm on that path i'm like oh this is path i need to turn back oh this is allah lean path i need to turn back so allah elaborated those paths so i can recognize where i stand it makes me more self-aware and that's the mindset with which we should read about the people of the past that allah talks about in the quran now today's quran briefly i wanted to discuss with you one of the many things that allah criticized about the israelites again now that he's criticizing that about the israelites this is a potential and very real criticism of me possibly myself okay so let's let's listen to this a little bit allah says when they come to those who have faith meaning the israelites they were you know set up in madina they had their their seminary they had their their their get-togethers where they were studying the torah and then they would come into contact with people like who used to call them out by the way but anyway so they come into contact with some of the muslims and the muslims started saying this about musa because they've learned from the quran the muslims have learned from the quran about their prophets so they're telling him about islam and yusuf and they're like they're calling them out because for example about about yusuf alayhi salaam just as an example in the torah and what they have now of the torah yusuf alayhi salaam saw a dream and he didn't tell his father he told his brothers he went and told his brothers and his brothers got mad at him and beat him up and then he then the brothers came and complained to their father yakub and yakub got angry why did he have to get this dream i'm so mad ya allah why him meaning yakub is angry that yusuf got a dream the quran what's the quran doing it's challenging the story that exists in the torah it's challenging it right so they hear it they go yeah that makes sense some of them make the make the mistake of saying yeah you that sounds reasonable that sounds but then when they said that some of the other guys in the in the school they're like why are you giving it away man what are you doing don't talk to these people so they'd have their own meeting after the muslims when they meet those who have faith they say we have faith too yeah we we agree with that too we accept that too then when they have their private meeting when they're alone just with each other are you really going to talk to them about stuff they're going to use this as an argument against you you had you and they're going to use this to say that you should have accepted islam they'll make a case in front of allah do you want to convert is that what you want to do you want to leave this religion you want to get kicked out of this school use your head think what's wrong with you don't interact with these muslims don't listen to this because it'll make you change change is scary man don't don't change so this they would warn each other from confronting reality from confronting the truth this was their this was the meetings of the knowledgeable among them and they were they were warning the mass congregation among them so this is one scene that allah describes now what might i learn from that i might learn from that that there are people that become in in this um like in previous ummahs they might become so obsessed with preserving their group that preserving islam is not the concern preserving the loyalty to the word of allah is not the concern preserving my my my commitment to the truth is not the concern preserving that i still maintain my membership of this group this group talks a certain way dresses a certain way they act a certain way they see the world a certain way and my membership on this group depends on how much i look and act exactly like them by the way in sociological terms that is called a cult right a cult necessitates that you don't think outside of the cult and if you are exposed to any thinking from out from the outside you reject it right away and by the way the indoctrination in the cult means that you have to know anyone else from the outside is a danger don't talk about anything with anyone on the outside if you want the truth we have it we've got the copyright on it everybody else is a bootleg version don't go there save yourself right and the moment somebody even steps a little bit out then they get threatened you're going to get kicked out of the club listen if you want to maintain membership you better get back in line you better you better sort yourself out because you're looking like you're you're you're out of the you know the the people that have the guaranteed ticket to heaven you're you're losing your membership your entry ticket is going to get invalidated this is the mentality that allah describes here right they're scaring people to stay within conformity that's one thing that happened and of course i don't criticize groups in the muslim world and whatever you can make up your own mind but the reality is in christianity in judaism and in islam the threat is very real that people will actually end up their commitment their loyalty will end up being to a cult rather than to the truth i've had the honor of traveling around the muslim world and and visiting many madaras where students are diligently studying islam studying and sometimes i'm asked to speak to these students that have been studying for five seven eight years they've been studying the islamic sciences etcetera right now what am i going to give them that they're already they're studying these they're on their way to becoming scholars and of service to the ummah and pretty much every time i have a chance to speak to them i say just remain remain respectful of your teachers but remain loyal to the truth that's the only advice i can give you like you you know and and when when the truth hits you and you say something i learned from my teacher is not coinciding with what i see as the truth then have a respectful conversation with your teachers have that conversation learn keep an open mind broaden yourself and the moment you start getting hey if you ask this question again i'm going to kick you out of the school we don't tolerate these kinds of questions here there's one time i was in a halaqa masjid and the brother spoke after the salah he gave a short reminder and somebody from the audience said where did you get that from you just asked the simple question like he wasn't being condescending he said where did where is that from i'd like to read it myself right and the person presenting got really upset he said my father was the grand of this is the school and i studied and you're going to ask me where i got it from you know and he was so offended that his credentials are being challenged because listen if you have the honor of getting to hear my sound waves then you better you know just say thank you and walk away because you don't i i own this thing you're just you know getting to hear it a little bit this mentality is a poison that was that existed among the israelites and allah warned us about it allah warned us about that now let's talk about the audience so that's about the the corrupt teacher the cult but there's a problem with the audience too they're not innocent either in the next ayah allah says and among them are people that are um unlettered uneducated but the israelites were knowledgeable people they were craftsmen they were they were blacksmiths they were traders they were they were knowledgeable in many fields and today we can be programmers we can be met you know medical doctors we can be you know political scientists we could be researchers what's he how is he saying among them are unlettered people he's talking about in terms of their religion in terms of the actual scripture in terms of the word of allah they're completely unlettered they have no direct access to their book they have no clue what it says they don't know the book so he further explains himself saying among them are unlettered that don't know the book um interestingly for those of you that are students of the arabic language can be considered as young because is necessary now what that means in simple english is they are unlettered who don't know the book there's a letter people who don't know the book okay except for emmani this interesting word so they don't know the book except for amani now amani can be translated wishful thinking um or originally pronounced munya and then it became omnia it has several meanings one of them is what the heart desires what the heart actually desires what it wishes for it also implies the meaning of the mind being preoccupied with what is or what might not even exist meaning fantasizing in your head dreaming in your head allah is commenting on the mass population of the israelites and saying that a huge number of them are unlettered and the only thing they know about their book is what they wish was in the book or their own wishes have now corrupted their opinion of what the book the quran never says you have to pray five times where does it show me right they don't want to pray so now the quran over says that okay show me in the quran i can't go i can't i can't do that where is it where does it talk about beer show me where's weed show it to me it didn't even it didn't even exist then bro so it's fine you know so like you know i'm not i'm not gambling i'm just tapping that's the word is there's a finger tapping hara that's just you know you do it in salah too i'm doing it on the screen nothing you know what that is you've already got desires you want to do some stuff and now you want to impose that onto the book and say nah that's not what the book says that's what it says allah says be kind bro allah says he's going to forgive allah says it look he's a little fool or something what's that arabic word yes what he says so you pick a truth and you come up with your own islam and then even the best one yeah that's not the islam i follow you know i have my own connection to allah okay well you know what that means i i don't need to know the book i got my my feelings are actually my religion how i feel is my religion and you can't judge me no allah's word no no no you that's you judging me but allah says i got a special connection with allah you don't know allah understands me really but you don't seem to understand allah all right and they're doing nothing but making assumptions they do nothing but make assumptions this is a commentary on the educated yet uneducated the educated and yet uneducated so now there's two classes of people of the israelites that were the cause of this great corruption the ones in the religious class were too obsessed with preserving and growing their cult and the ones among the masses were too obsessed with their own wishes and every time they hear something that doesn't align with their wishes i don't like this this is too extreme i like this this is this makes me feel good so i want a feel-good version i don't want to feel bad version i don't want a version that questions anything that i'm doing and what's interesting it's it's a really interesting opposing dynamic stay with me here the the the population wanted to hear what they wanted to hear based on their amani right and the cult so so they want to feel good and the cult wants to keep people in the cult by making them feel bad so one group is obsessed with making you feel bad if you leave you're going to burn in hell if you don't do this then you're misguided then you know so they're they're negative constantly negative and the people are looking for overly positive so there's a salty poison and there's a sweet poison both poisons and then the people say i don't want to follow this cult they're too negative i'm going to do my own thing and then the cult says these people are all lost there might as well be they're out of the fold we're going to cut ourselves off from them so what happens in those societies the religious form their own social environment where they're everybody who similar is hanging out together they're interacting with each other their gatherings are different their socializing is different their conversations are different and they're more and more and more isolated from the outside world and the outside world of the of the believers they're like oh those people are too crazy i can't hang out with those people i just get uncomfortable even going over to their house it's too insane so i'm gonna do my own thing we're gonna have our own and then our islam is gonna be like a wishful thinking happy islam so they have the depressing islam we have the happy islam the only thing missing now is what allah actually says everybody's got their own and the only thing missing is how do we restore this situation this is what happened to the people before us now when i when i travel especially when i try to take observation of what's happening in the muslim world i notice these segmentations you know i'll i'll sit with the company of and have students and that environment right and it's a completely different environment the way they talk the way they behave the way they the what the world you know it's beautiful but it's also very insulated and then you go meet with other muslims that are in the corporate world or in the business world or in the world of politics a completely different it's the same they're two streets down from each other but they live in two different universes and the twain shall never meet they're they're on two different worlds and i then i start wondering why am i allowed access to both clubs because i don't quite fit in either did i realize something there is something that ties every believer together and that's the word of allah that's actually the word of allah a lot of young men and women that are sitting here some of you are married some of you are going to be married some of your university students my advice to you the reason i wanted to share this with you is actually something that you can do that can change the way we as an ummah interact and one commitment you can make in your life practically make in your life is that what you want to understand the quran better and you don't want to understand the quran based on your own personal inclinations and you don't want to understand the quran in a close-minded way either you want to interact and deeply contemplate the word of allah and that pathway needs to be facilitated for the average muslim every muslim should have access to the word of allah access to an education that they can get even if they're full-time even if they're a stay-at-home mom you know this shouldn't just be for those who leave everything behind and then they want to study islam that can happen for a small minority of people but the vast majority of also the word of allah didn't come for a few the word of allah came for everyone right so everyone there needs to be a facilitating of access to the word of allah and the challenge is before that in the next two minutes i'll just mention a couple of challenges it's easy to say we should connect to the quran better that's an easy thing to say what does that even mean the first time i heard that when i didn't know anything i was like okay i'm going to understand the quran i've heard many quran you should better understand the quran i went and got somebody gave me a gift of a translation of the quran it was the use of ali translation may allah reward him and i used to read it on the subway on my way to college like okay i'm going to read the quran i'm going to try to understand i could not make heads or tales of this thing i could not understand anything first of all the language was shakespearean which was a challenge enough right so you know when the moment you see hast thou not seen it you know i i don't know what to do with this and then then after that when you start with al-baqarah for example then allah is talking about one thing then he's talking about the story of adam then he's talking about the israelites and he's talking about people i don't know and he's mentioning them briefly and he moves on to something else and something else and something else i'm like what was this about this this is like this is confusing now if i go to if i go to someone and say quran is confusing what did you just say you want to stay in the culture what shut up just recite the quran okay just make god if you if you start saying hey this this is not making sense to me how do you how do you understand this then brother this is the kalam allah you have to have allah maybe let me let me take you to somebody who do rookie on you when you fix your problem you know like the problem is allah himself said who ask questions our religion is not like judaism it's not like christianity it's not like hinduism ours is the only religion that says think contemplate critique analyze if this was not from allah then bring your evidences evidence exploration go learn ask the people of the book ask the people of other religions who which religion says go talk to people of other religions which religion says that which book says that this is an incredible deen it's a revolution actually it's the it's the it's the religion that's like no other religion even in its structure because it it demands from human beings to be thoughtful to be thinking to be analytical to be critical and that's what they're the the base of their faith the strength of their faith comes from that you know that's what i what i'm requesting that you put time into and you don't need to put endless amounts of hours 10 15 minutes a day that's it just deeply contemplate and think and you have a community where people are educated in the religion they're educated and deemed they've studied quran when you get those questions bring those questions and say hey what is this ayah telling us what does this mean and i started that journey what 23 24 years ago i can tell you with a complete degree of confidence i know very very little of the quran very very little of the quran and i'm not saying that out of some false humility that's the reality of it when you actually start studying in the quran then you realize how much you don't know how much you don't know and it's it's such a fulfilling rewarding experience to become a student of allah's words because allah's words are an endless ocean of wisdom they're just an endless it just keeps fulfilling you and fulfilling you there's some of you are are health conscious you eat healthy some of you are exercise conscious you take care of your bodies some of you have very good sleep schedules right there are things you put in place that make sure that you're living a healthy you know a good life well there needs to be a spiritual regimen to a quran regiment that needs to become a part of that as regular as brushing your teeth like this is the time that i'm going to give this to quran and thinking about the quran this is the time where weekly i'm going to come back to the masjid and ask these questions to the imam or to the sheikh hey i was studying quran here was this question i had here's something i'm content what can i read about this what can i do more about this start somewhere you don't have to be a scholar from the beginning but everybody can be a thinker everybody can be sincere in their in their approach to allah's word and allah does not leave any of his servants who come to his word seeking his guidance seeking to contemplate his word he does not leave them with misguidance and that's the other terrible thing that's been done in many muslim countries especially south asia they tell you hey don't study quran on your own you'll get misguided you have to go from study from a scholar because if you're not a scholar don't touch it really really the religion that spread did it spread with scholars when those abyssinians heard the quran did they sit with the scholar when they heard the quran did the more the makkans themselves scholars when the jinns were here in the quran they passed by i heard ayat of allah did they get into jazza first hey let me take a few courses in before i can hear this they heard the quran they thought about it they commented on it allah liked their comments so much he put them in the quran he put that in the quran i don't dismiss the value of scholarship but if you're going to make scholarship a gatekeeper from people thinking about the word of allah that is a crime against the book of allah that is a crime against the book of allah you're making sure they remain the group they don't know the book the ummah has to know the word of allah the ummah has to ask questions about the word of allah and sometimes you will get the wrong conclusions you will get the craziest ideas and that's why you have to go to people that know better and say hey i had this crazy idea and they'll say yeah that's crazy let me tell you why that's crazy and you say oh okay okay okay yep you're right that was crazy and that's how you refine that's how you learn any subject isn't it you make mistakes you get corrected you make mistakes you get that's why you get tested when you make when you get test any subject when you have a test the only answers the only answers you will never forget are the ones you got wrong you know that the one that got the red mark on the teat from the teacher that one cut you deep you're never gonna make that mistake again so actually the process of learning and maybe heading towards the wrong conclusion and then getting it corrected that's actually the way to refine ourselves you can't just be perfect and the assumption that someone who knows more than you has always got the right answer that's also wrong because we're all human beings and this is the word of allah the word of allah is perfect there are people that i study with this i know i've taken over time one last minute the people i work with they are scholars in quranic studies like some of them have studied quran they've got phds from muslim world and western academia others hadith experts others and we study quran together and when we study the quran together we're like yeah we don't know i was wrong about this ayah i mean i read it but i didn't think this i thought this is what it meant but that's not that seems like that's not what it means we're revisiting our conclusion just because you're qualified and you've studied it for 15 20 30 years doesn't mean that you've got it down this is the word of allah human beings will always have to be humble to it so i pray that we develop this humble attitude towards the perfect word of allah and that we we develop a culture of contemplating the quran and that culture helps keep our hearts unlocked you know and the other thing that we'll do it will absolutely convince you that this can only be the word of allah may allah will bring the light of the quran into our hearts and minds and and allow that light to bring blessings into our our families and our communities

Channel: Bayyinah Institute

Views: 72,528

Keywords: Nouman Ali Khan, Arabic, Quran, Islam, Bayyinah, Bayyinah TV, Bayyinah Institute, Koran, Islamic, Education, Muslim, islam, muhammad, muslim

Id: JTtouiT6pOE

Length: 31min 59sec (1919 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 16 2022